Scholar-activism in agrarian and development studies and practice

Abstract

Scholar-activism is a tradition in knowledge politics that takes the side of the exploited and the oppressed when talking about development. It is necessarily embedded in the wideranging knowledge political coalitions – for social justice or corporate profit-making – that include actors from academia, grassroots social movements, small autonomous research institutions, as well as states, corporations and philanthropies. We critically examine questions as to who gets to talk about development, from which platform and how, whose voices count, and the conditions under which various actors talk about development.